Wood products makers eye Canada

Wood products businesses should boost exports to Canada, a potentially
lucrative market, a recent seminar held in HCM City heard.

Nguyen
Thanh Xuan, deputy director of the city-based Investment and Trade
Promotion Centre (ITPC) said Canada is a huge market with large demand
for wood products and furniture.

It is the world's fifth largest importer of wooden furniture and its imports are growing at 2 percent annually, she said.

Thanks
to their improvement in quality and design and reasonable prices,
Vietnamese wood products are attracting increasing interest in Canada,
especially items requiring high quality, she said.

Robert
Mackinnon of the Trade Facilitation Office Canada (TFO), who is leading a
delegation of six Canadian buyers to Vietnam, said Canada i
s a major importer and exporter, even during the ongoing economic crisis.

Last year Vietnam was the top exporter of furniture products to Canada among ASEAN members, he said.

Tran
Quoc Manh, deputy chairman of the Handicraft and Wood Association of
HCM City (HAWA), said: "It is the right time to boost exports to the
Canadian market since [its] potential is no less than the US'."

Though
Vietnamese export of wooden products to Canada has increased in recent
years, it remains low compared to the market's total demand, he said.

Canada has high demand for indoor furniture made of hard wood like white oak and red oak and soft wood like pine, he said.

Customers there prefer environmentally friendly products, he said.

Mackinnon
said two-way communication between buyers and sellers is very
important, meaning Vietnamese suppliers should know English.

Suppliers
should keep buyers informed of problems such as late delivery and deal
with problems like damage during shipment, he said.

"Product
development is very important because buyers do not buy the same thing
forever but are always looking for new products," he said.

In
addition, companies should pay close attention to packaging and
enclosing certificates involved in the production and other processes,
he said.

Huynh Van Hanh, also the HAWA vice chairman said
exports of wood products to Canada was worth 84.9 million USD last year
compared to 54.6 million USD in 2009.

It was 56.1 million USD in the first eight months of this year.

In
the first nine months overall wood products export topped 2.8 billion
USD, an increase of 16.3 percent year-on-year, according to the Ministry
of Industry and Trade.

Export for the whole year is expected to be 3.8 billion USD.

HAWA,
ITPC, and TFO Canada, in collaboration with the Vietnamese Trade Office
in Canada, invited the Canadian buyer delegation to Vietnam to directly
meet Vietnamese furniture and handicrafts makers and explore buying
opportunities.

Besides attending the seminar, the visitors also held business meetings and visited factories./.